Benefits of Involving Physicians in Your Schedule Creation

Your quest for developing a schedule that makes everyone happy is an ongoing challenge in your role as the group administrator. While you strive to maintain an equitable schedule, physicians may have other ideas about what qualifies as “equitable.”

Moreover, today’s young, talented physicians seek a better work-life balance. This requires a schedule that enables the physician to avoid burnout and encourages them to stay at a facility where the work schedule is more to their liking.

Scheduling is a heavy load for group administrators. While you at least can rely on scheduling software to make the job less time-consuming, this is also a job that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, be done without the support or knowledge of your colleagues.

Involve Your Team in Scheduling

Creating a schedule that’s fair and equitable for every physician can only happen when other physicians are involved in the schedule creation process. Providers who feel that they work too many weekends or night shifts compared to co-workers may become frustrated easily and spend too much time concerned about making all shifts and overtime fair. While you may face criticism or opposition from these providers, one way to ease their frustration is to ask them to submit solutions for each criticism. With the insight of providers, you won’t have to remake the schedule as frequently.

Strive to approach the schedule as a team and seek provider input on schedules as they’re posted. Remind your colleagues that constructive feedback can ensure fewer conflicts or a more balanced workload.

Discuss Scheduling During Team Meetings

Your organization should meet regularly in teams to discuss all work operations. We recommend adding scheduling issues to the agenda. This allows employees the opportunity to provide feedback and participate in scheduling discussions. Make sure everyone has a chance to speak at these meetings, keep them focused, and outline clear action items you can follow through on.

Use Suggestions as the Foundation for Solutions

Once you’ve developed a list of provider suggestions for the schedule, choose which pieces of feedback you will prioritize. Create systems to implement these changes into the schedule creation process, then follow up with coworkers and the difference it made, if any. Scheduling software such as Shift Admin makes it easier to implement changes while taking less time to schedule overall.

Be Honest About Your Scheduling Difficulties

Let your providers know that scheduling is a complex process that entails balancing many issues, not the least of which are patient needs, facility requirements, and organizational structure and culture. The chances are, many providers, and employees in most organizations, don’t understand the challenges that come with scheduling shifts.

That said, you must explain the information you need for providers who make schedule requests, particularly time-off requests. Explain the need for a scheduling software that’s unbiased and helps ease everyone’s frustrations by generating an unbiased, fully-optimized schedule that considers every possibility and rule much faster than any human could do.

By incorporating your providers into schedule creation, you will have a more optimized schedule and more efficient team.

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